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Monday, December 3, 2012

Holy cow, I finally have a moment to sit down and write this. When I had my last baby my regular doctor told me during my c-section he noticed that my insides were a mess and nothing like he had ever seen before. I should go and see a specialist to check it out. Well, I thought, yeah it can wait. So a little over a year it did, but gradually every month my stomach would get more painful to touch, move, lay on, anything. The pressure almost felt like I had a baby still inside my belly. I’d had enough and made an appointment to see the specialist, thinking it was going to be a bad case of endometriosis.

The appointment came and tests were ran. While sitting in the room the doctor came in and told me I did in fact have endometriosis, but he noticed something alarming. The scar tissue had been hiding a massive tumor that was growing around my uterus and connecting everything together. As in, my abdominal wall was now part of my uterus, bladder, liver, kidneys, lungs, intestines, and bowel. He sat down and gave me the surgical options, all risky because of how much cutting would need to take place, I could bleed to death, or one of those organs could be punctured.

First things first we had a biopsy done to make sure the tumor wasn’t cancer. Those were the longest two weeks of my life waiting for the results. I didn’t sleep or eat. If I did eat I threw up. I cried all the time, thought about what would my husband do, my kids. Would they remember me if I died? I looked at my life and reevaluated everything, wanting every moment I could to spend with my family, husband, and children. I didn’t care about material things anymore. All that mattered was the time I had.

I remember the day the call came back from the doctor’s office. The sun was bright, Riot was in his highchair eating eggs. I was sitting at the table watching his little mouth move around as he chewed. Trying to imprint every detail of his face to memory. I looked at the number on the screen and hesitated to answer. After thee rings I pushed the button and heard the news. The tumor was benign, but fast growing and needed to come out as soon as possible or it would in other words smother my organs. The nurse paused and said, “You need to pay for half of this up front though. Can you bring in the $6000 this week?”

“No,” I whispered. “That is way more then we have saved up. Let me call you back after I t figure out how to pay for this.”

“We can’t go any further with out the payment.”

We hung up.

Two major emotions ran through me. Relief, it wasn’t cancer. Helplessness, I couldn’t pay for the surgery up front. I put my head on the table and cried for I don’t know how long.

I asked one of my friends who worked at a hospital what should I do. She mentioned a doctor who was very good and would work with patents who didn’t have insurance. I made some phone calls and set up an appointment with this doctor. He asked to see my file before hand as well.

We met with this new doctor and form the moment we started talking we knew this was the right way to go. He had me do another scan and found the tumor had grown more. We set the surgery date.

All went well, the only hiccup was the surgery went longer than expected. I’m so glad to have this over with and on the mend. Through out all of this, I found I have a great family and friends. They all were amazing and helped me out so much. I couldn’t have gotten through this with out you.

About Me

I write young adult books, *on the road to publication*. I married my high school sweet heart and have some of the most beautiful children in the world. I'm a happy, positive person, and advocate for Fragile X Syndrome and Autism. Welcome to my chaos I call life.